


Safe as Houses

by Beastrage



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: ...as far as you know, Accidental harm, Canon, Canon Compliant, Cryptids, Gen, Gideon Gleeful Being A Jerk, Gravity Falls Is Weird, Implied Conspiracies, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Mystery Shack, POV Nonhuman, POV Third Person Limited, Pre-Canon, Self-Discovery, Sentient Buildings, Soos is Awesome, Sorry Wendy!, Spoilers, Stan's Relationship with Gravity Falls, Swearing, This is Gravity Falls after all, Wendy is more mentioned than anything else, Woodpeckers, as in the house discovers itself
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2018-11-21 14:13:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11359140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beastrage/pseuds/Beastrage
Summary: The weird thing would be if the Mystery Shack wasn't more than it seemed.The life and times of the Mystery Shack, a sentient house with an interest in its inhabitants.





	1. The House the Author Built

Gravity Falls is the sort of place that births oddities. 

The strange and unusual are drawn here, by some unknown force they cannot deny. 

The perfect place for a budding researcher of the paranormal. 

He’ll need a house, of course, somewhere closer to his places of study in the woods. But there isn’t one, not one built so close to the treeline.

(The people of Gravity Falls are many things, but at least they know better than to challenge the dark forests surrounding them.)

Stanford Pines is many things and stubborn is one of them. If there is no house to purchase, then, well, he’ll have one built!

A crooked cabin, leaning closer to wildness than civilization. A triangular building, roof pointing towards the sky. It looks musty and old, despite having only been finished a few days ago.

It’s perfect. 

As he lays a six-fingered hand against the wood, some of this feeling leaks through, reaching for the spirit of whatever sacred tree was used to build this house. 

Something stirs in the strange wood, creaking and groaning as the house faces its first nightfall complete. Nonexistent eyes blink under the raw moonlight. Yes, Gravity Falls births oddities, but the Author makes them  _ real,  _ pinned down on pages of paper and ink.  __

* * *

 

All the house knows is that it belongs to Stanford Pines. It was built for him, made for him, in a way no other building could match. There is a feeling in this, something called  _ pride.  _ And perhaps, in another life, the house would never learn this, never become anything more a vague impression in the wooden timbers that comprise it. Never truly a normal building, but as normal as it gets when it comes to Gravity Falls. 

If not for the Shape. 

 

Early in the young house’s existence, there comes a Shape. A form beyond the physical weathers of wind and rain the house knows, that has no physical body like the humans that live inside it. It doesn’t exist where the house does, but it exists, nonetheless. 

The Shape comes, visiting Stanford in a place the house cannot follow, when the human closes its eyes and does not move beyond breathing. 

Something burns in the house at this, knowing it cannot watch, cannot see  _ all  _ of its owner. 

(Jealousy, the house later learns. This is jealousy, this uncomfortable burning feeling like not-real fire. It is  _ jealous  _ of the Shape, for having more of Stanford than itself.)

But the realization of jealousy comes much later. First, the house knows  _ irritation, impatience.  _ It stretches its walls as far as they can go, squeezing at its doors and windows. There is Something in the Ground, Something that must be Completed. 

 

(Bill Cipher has always been rather careless. He leaks power like a sieve, having long forgotten a time that he was without it. He’s impatient, getting so close to the end of millions of years of manipulation. A bit of that extra annoyance taints the mindscape of his most recent acquisition, prompting a feeling of “hurry, hurry!”. It encourages the human like it’s supposed to, but it does more than that. 

Bill Cipher has never been  _ careful, _ and as a result, the house tastes his power as well.)

The house stretches out so far, that one day, it snaps. Every room comes together all at once, smashing into some amorphous shaped mass. Luckily, this happens when the humans are gone, exploring the woods. Otherwise, the house is not sure exactly what would have happened to the delicate squishy beings. 

Oops. A little bit of moving there, shifting here, and tada! Everything is back to the normal. (At least, as normal it’s ever going to get. That bedroom was always next to the kitchen, right?)

Once the house has realized this new freedom, it never wants to give it up. Moving is something  _ humans  _ do, that Stanford does. To move is to be more than a mere building, maybe enough to challenge Stanford’s interest in the Shape.

 

(Stanford just  _ stares.  _ At the bedroom behind the door he’s just opened.  _ I could have sworn...yes, this is where my study is supposed to be _ . He closes and opens the door a few times, only for a bedroom to be there each and every time. “Bill?” “ _ What’s up, Sixer?”  _ Ford gestures helplessly at the door. “I’m awake, correct? This isn’t a dream?” 

A pause. Then, his muse’s grating laughter starts up. “ _ Haha! Yeah, you’re awake.” _

“What’s this, then?”

Bill hums.  _ “A bit of this, a bit of that. The portal’s just affecting your house a little. Nothing serious, that’s for sure!” _

“Hm.” Ford’s hand tightens around the doorknob. There’s something wrong with that statement, he’s pretty sure, but his tired mind makes no headway in comprehending it. In the end, he shrugs and goes through the doorway, flopping onto messy covers.

Underneath his body, the bed buzzes, pleased with his decision.)

 

As the Something Underground draws nearer to competition, the house feels...cold. Wooden planks shiver and shrink in response to more than just snow. Subtle impatience slowly edges into uncertainty. What if the Something takes him away? What if the  _ Shape  _ takes him away  _ forever? _

The second human is gone now and the house shakes as it recalls the scene. The human had fled like it was on fire, pieces of its mind trailing all over the place. Stanford had retreated after that, mind gone to dark places the house could not see but could sense. 

No, the Shape is bad for Stanford, the house decides. The Shape should leave  _ right now. _

 

(That night, when the dream demon comes for his nightly visit, there’s a locked door in the way. Bill pauses, evaluating the situation. Of course it’s no trouble at all to a being of his power to break it down, but the fact that the door even  _ exists _ is interesting. 

A simple knock and the door falls right over. 

But there’s another one right behind it.  _ GOAWAYGOAWAY _ screams green lettering. 

A cane taps on the floor. “ That’s what we’re playing now? Ooh, I love GAMES! Riddle me this...what’s blue, wooden, and burns all over?”  Bill snaps his fingers and the door bursts into blue flame. _“_ _ You!”  _ The mindscape surrounding the triangle trembles, nearly dissolving, and screams. Once the fire goes out, there are no further roadblocks to Bill’s planned destination: Sixer’s mind. Bill thinks no further of the incident. But other things will _remember,_ even if he doesn't.)

 

The house retreats, licking its metaphysical wounds. The Shape is beyond its ken, its small newly-learned grasp of power. There is one new emotion now, to fill the gape a retreating envy and nervousness left behind. 

_ Despair. _

Ice floods the house, windows shuddering and pictures bouncing slightly off its walls. Stanford notices nothing, of course, lost in heartfelt betrayal. With his misery on top of its own, the house feels lost. Helpless. 

How can it help Stanford against the Shape, when it can’t even protect itself? Faced with this simple truth, the house retreats, curling up on itself. It doesn’t even bother switching the kitchen and the bathroom, or any of the other rooms. 

Winter slows the already sluggish pine-water down to a trickle. Frost clings to the windows as a thick white coat. The heating dies down to nearly nothing, air temperature almost matching the weather outside. Wooden joints grind against each other. Even with the harsh weather, Stanford’s living conditions are worse inside than they would be outside. 

Blood on the walls, some of it in thick enough the clots the house can almost taste it. Oftentimes, there is screaming. Wild, horrible cries, “No! No! NO! This can’t be real, can’t be...”

The water that comes from Stanford’s eyes is full of salt, seeping into the very foundations themselves. 

All the while, the Something Underground sings its haunting song, a tune built not of any earthly sound but instead of longing and desire.  

There are  _ things _ calling from the other side, and they are  _ hungry  _ for a good time.  

* * *

 

A man knocks at the door, coming where no one else has (or will ever) come. To the house’s limited senses, the human feels almost exactly like Stanford. 

While the house is puzzling out this mystery, there is a fight. Several fights. 

It ends, to say the least,  _ poorly.  _

The house tries its best, really, it does. But some events are dependent entirely on moving lifeforms, and the house has no legs, no arms to change anything with. Only watching with the eyes it hasn’t got, as the Something Underground attempts to swallow Stanford whole. 

The Something Underground wins and both the house and the man are left to quietly despair. 

 

The man is like Stanford but Different. Notably, his mind appears a lot more stable than Stanford’s. A gentle poke at his dark mindscape and it wobbles back, ready for a fight. 

But the man is far more sensitive to the moving rooms than Stanford ever was, less prepared for the unusual Gravity Falls norm.

 

(Stanley Pines doesn’t know what the  _ hell  _ his brother was doing here, other than building that portal, but he’s pretty sure that the house is  _ haunted _ . Rooms that were never there before reveal themselves through doorways. Doors open and close by themselves. Curtains make rustling noises from where they cover various mirrors. Eyes and darkness haunt his dreams, an unwelcome change from the usual trapped-in-the-trunk ones. 

Worst of all, is the feeling he gets prickling between his shoulder blades of someone watching him. But Stan’s not going to let some  _ house  _ drive him away, not when Ford...is gone.  

One day, he finds a single phrase carved into a wall over and over again.  _ I am Stanford Filbrick Pines. I am Stanford Filbrick Pines. I am Stanford... _ the neat handwriting grows more and more crooked, until at the very bottom, there’s some sort of stain in the carpet.

Stan’s spent enough time trying to get blood out of his car seating to know what it is. A sense of failure fills him. His brother had needed him, and what had he done? Shoved him into a space hole. 

His fingers trace the six-finger hand on the cover of the book. Of the last thing Ford had given him, before the portal. Before his next great mistake. But he was going to  _ fix it.  _ That was all that mattered, wasn’t it? For once in his life, Stanley Pines was going to fix his mistakes.)

 

_ Stanley Pines.  _ That’s the man’s name, the name he whispered to the book in his hands.  _ Stanley.  _ The house likes this name, the way it reminds the house of Stanford. 

Stanley is different but that is not necessarily bad. The Shape’s influence does not taint him, does not stalk his footsteps. But the house knows that with the Something Underground still here, the Shape will be back. This time, the house will not let the Shape take its person. 

One of the first actions the house takes to protect its new owner is to shore up the walls in Stanley’s mindscape. 

Nice sturdy walls. The house looks at them, satisfied. This will stop the Shape.

But it doesn’t. That very night, Stanley’s own mind floods to the very top and the resulting pressure washes the carefully crafted barriers away. 

 

(Stan wakes up that morning with a headache and a faintly recalled dream of drowning. He shrugs it off and goes downstairs for the day’s work.)

 

Hm. How could the house protect Stanley from the Shape if his mind refused to cooperate? The Shape hasn’t returned in quite some time, as far as the house can tell, gone with Stanford. But the Something Underground will draw the Shape back, the house is certain. 

The next few ‘sleep’ periods, the house experiments. Various attempts include, but are not limited to, forming semi-sentient dream guards, flooding the house’s own mindscape as an extra barrier, and twisting the entranceway to Stanley’s mindscape just ever so slightly. 

Nothing works. 

Stanley wiggles, crawls, and bashes his way through every barrier without realizing what he’s doing. At this point, there must be some consideration paid to the thought of giving up this endeavor. This has to stop.

 

(For the last week, he’s been having terrible headaches. Stan groans, kneading at his forehead, feeling something throb behind his eyes. The nightmares having been getting worse too, bad enough he can’t get a wink of sleep.  _ This has to stop. _ )

* * *

 

Everything comes to a head during the biggest blizzard of the year. 

The wooden walls whine under the pressure of both heavy snow and extreme temperatures. Sleep, should Stanley choose to pursue it, would be a death sentence. The house has seen enough frozen squirrels to know this much about organic bodies. But Stanley tries sleeping, a strange twist from Stanford who always avoided sleep. The house has no choice: for the first time, it directly enters the human’s mind in person. 

 

( _ Bigger than an elephant,  _ part of Stan thinks. The rest of him rages at the whatever-it-is sitting right in front of the Stan-o-War. “Get out!” he yells, punching the thing right in the side. A big blue eye watches him, blinking once. The thing doesn’t move. Not an inch. 

“So that’s what we’re going to play, huh?” Somehow, he’s not sure how, the beach under the thing dissolves. The eye barely has enough time to widen in shock before falling into the resulting abyss. 

Stan huffs, turning to the Stan-o-War. But the dream is no longer as nice as he recalls, the ocean waves looking...flat, and the Stan-o-War is empty of any brothers. Stan turns away, because what else can he do, at this point, other than try to save Ford?

When he wakes up, he remembers nothing. Only curses and rushes to turn the heat on, teeth chattering all the while. “Seriously, Ford, what the  _ hell.” _ )

 

Even when Stanley forgets, the house remembers. Stanley  _ had  _ defended himself, quite well, in the most impossible way. Were mindscapes supposed to be manipulated like that? The house could kind of do it for its own territory, but humans were a different kettle of fish entirely. 

The house, for the first time in months, rests peacefully. 

Stanley would be safe. Stanley could protect himself. 

The Shape wouldn’t come.

 

Snow melts, ice disappears, losing its death-grip on Gravity Falls. Flowers sprout everywhere there’s room, grass looking greener and greener. The house, for its part, resigns itself to the burrowing gnomes that come with the thawed earth. 

“Come one, come all, welcome to...the Murder Hut!”

Doors spring open, ready for a new age and new owner.

Wherever Stanford may be, Stanley was here now.

And the house couldn’t be happier. 


	2. Mystery Shack and the Thirty Years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thirty years goes by pretty quickly when you're a building. It's like tree years.

The house couldn’t be more frustrated. Five times those annoying ‘law people’ had come snooping, looking for ways to kick Stanley out.

Or ‘Stanford’, as Stanley now called himself after his brother. Pretty decent of the human to protect himself better than his brother ever did, saving the house some stress. The name-change should keep him safe from whatever creepy fey were out and about.

To the house, however, he would always be Stanley.

 

Anyway, what was the house thinking about...oh, yes, the ‘law people’. Unfortunately, window rattling and door slamming hadn’t been enough to drive them away. Time to turn to some desperate measures.

 

(When the fourth group of tourists runs away screaming, their tires screeching against the road, Stan knows something’s up. Probably something _supernatural,_ with his luck.

He may pretend that the only weirdness in this town was in the Murder Hut, but he’s not so dumb that he misses what’s really out there in the woods.

He had a bit of an unspoken agreement with those...others. Leave him be and he would do the same in return. So the agreement had held...until now.

Now, Stan probably needs to beat a monster up. Just to teach ‘em a lesson, of course.)

 

Why is Stanley leaving the house? The house had made sure he was safe from the nasty law people. A touch of fear and most run away, mouth holes making terrible howling sounds.

Stanley shouldn’t be going to the woods, the woods are dangerous. The house can’t reach out to the woods, not yet. Before, when Stanford left, that had been okay.

But the Shape had dug into Stanford’s mind under dark trees, scooped out thoughts like Summerween candy. The Shape could find Stanley if the house wasn’t there to shield him. _Anything_ truly terrible could find Stanley.

 _Scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch_ goes the floorboards as they rub against each other. If the house had lips, it would be biting into them, deep in thought.

How to track a human when you had no legs...this would take some fine-tuned work and experimentation.

A woodpecker chirps outside, about to tap her beak into the Murder Hut sign. Invisible eyes narrow thoughtfully, taking in wings and red feathers. Mostly wings. Hmm...

 

(The first place Stan heads is to some of the first monsters he ever ran into: the manotaurs.

“Hey, knuckleheads. Guess who’s back!” Stan shouts into the depths of the Man Cave. A stinky mixture of sweat and manure wafts up from the entrance. The human wrinkles his nose, waving a hand in front of it.

“The manly human has returned!” A lot of shuffling and grunting happens before a single manotaur is pushed from the Man Cave before Stan. A rather smaller than average specimen, which probably explains how it got pushed out to face Stan in the first place. It lets out a manly cry (read: squeal) and backs up heroically until its back is against stone wall. “We have done nothing, human!”

“I haven’t said anything,” Stan points out. He’s tempted to tap his foot, like his mother did whenever he and hi- Stanford did something wrong. But these are no unruly kids, just huge furry ‘manly’ cow-monsters that understand only Stan’s fists. The habits of his mother would be wasted on them.

“Er...” the manotaur scratches at the base of a horn. “Why are you here then?”

“ _Someone_ ’s been scaring my customers.” Stan cracks his knuckles. The manotaur shivers, chest hair shaking with the rest of him. “And you know what that means.”   
“No! It was the gnomes, the gnomes, I tell you!” The manotaur covers his eyes with thick meaty hands. Waiting for the inevitable blows to start.

Nothing happens. The manotaur carefully peeks through his fingers at the human. Stan sighs, rubbing at his forehead. “Great. You don’t know anything. Just...tell me who does.”

The manotaur huffs, expelling garlicky pizza breath into Stan’s face. “Fine...the Hand Witch!”

“Bum dum dum!” hum some background manotaurs from the Man Cave. A clash of cymbals and a sudden flash of light illustrates the gravity of the entire scene.

If there’s one thing that doesn’t survive in Gravity Falls, though, it’s gravity itself.

“Ow! My eyes! You hav’ ta to flash in my eyes!?” Various grunts and shouts echo from the cave as yet another fight starts up among the manotaurs.

Stan ignores all this, eyes still on the appointed speaker. “Hand Witch?”

“Sh!” The manotaur waves his hands. “She’ll hear you! And your e-”

“You say ‘emotional issues’, I _will punt you_.”

“Agh! Sorry, sorry. She’s over...” The manotaur points a shaking finger into the trees. “There.”

“There? Great. Just what I wanted to do today, wander a deep dark forest full of monsters,” Stan mutters, turning away to walk back under the trees.

The manotaur, as soon as the human leaves, raises his arms in a victory pose. “I live! Now...I get to come back in!”)

 

A woodpecker blinks, twisting her head around from her position among the trees. The trees look much larger this way, more spread out. The woodpecker spreads her wings to take off, and from inside a tiny teeny bird skull the house watches everything with a special kind of delight.

Something new! The world looks so big this way, humans so scary and strong.

Despite all of the new opportunities that have just opened up, the house doesn’t forget its mission: find Stanley.

....Which is pretty difficult for two reasons. One, the house has no idea where Stanley went. Two, the woodpecker’s in control here, not the house. Even now, the woodpecker decides to fly back to the house rather than deeper into the forest. How...useless. But fun!

 

The house pokes and pulls at the woodpecker until at last she flies away, drawn home under the threat of a setting sun. Window shutters stretch out after the bird, yearning for the basic freedoms she displayed. The house is fine, the house doesn’t need legs, the house- Stanley!

Flowers looked brighter, four doors gaped wide open, and the slanted roof straightened, just a bit. If there was a tail, it would have been wagged.

Stanley comes inside, slamming the door behind him, muttering something about, “Can’t forget to lock it.”

Instead of heading downstairs like he usually does after a long day, the human squats down on the floor, setting out some candles. The house gives the matter the attention it deserves: all of it.

Stanley carefully lights the white stubs one by one, before pinching the match out. He hisses and waves his hand in effort to cool his fingers down.

 

(Stan’s not sure _how_ the candles work, but they work as the witch promised. He feels itchy, the feeling of a thousand unblinking eyes watching him, unseen.

He clears his throat, already self-conscious at the thought of talking out loud to an empty room. “Hello?”

At that moment, Stan realizes that the house is silent. No sound of creaking wood, creeping mice, nothing. Not even the wind. The realization is...disturbing, to really dumb it down. “Yeah, well, we’ve got a problem here. Ghost, or whatever you, you keep scaring my customers away. And that’s...bad. Yeah.”

A window’s glass pane shake slightly. _Creak?_ The quiet sound seems so much louder in the absolute silence.

“Look, I need the customers to make money. Money to stay. If I don’t have that, I have to leave, got it?”

Only a feeling, but Stan’s pretty sure the ghost-thingie didn’t want him to leave. Call it instinct or a gut feeling, but that’s the only thing Stan’s really sure of in this entire situation.

This is weird, even for Gravity Falls.

“See, I’ll even rename this place to give you the right idea.” Stan scratches an ear, muttering the rest, “and get the cops off my back.”

He raises his voice again, loud enough to carry throughout the entire building. “How ‘bout...Mystery Shack?” Dumb name but it’s the best Stan can come up with on short notice.)

 

Mystery Shack. Mystery Shack. _Mystery Shack._ The hou- no, the _Mystery Shack_ likes it. It fits so much nicer than Murder Hut as a name.

A sudden door slam blows the candles out. Stan curses, scrabbling to pick the wax nubs up. “That a yes?”

A nearby light-bulb flickers on and off, along with the TV.

“I’ll take that as a yes, then.”

* * *

 

After that first little hiccup, things go on smoothly at the Mystery Shack. Stan cons- _cough,_ sells the secrets of the unknown to gullible tourists by day, works on the Something Underground by night. Standing search warrants for a certain ‘Murder Hut’ are now null and void, under local law, at least. The shack keeps an eye on everything but never interferes more than what’s necessary.

 

Woodpeckers come in handy, too. Whenever the days run just a little too dull, too ordinary, the shack carefully sneaks a peek through the eyes of the nearest woodpecker. Only woodpeckers, no other bird, for whatever strange reason.

The logic of Gravity Falls lies beyond both man and building, apparently. Thankfully, the feathered tree-pokers live pretty _everything_ around the Mystery Shack, a even spread in every direction. The shack never gets total control over a bird, but gains enough influence to be able to cause one to poop all over a daring gnome. Hah! Classic revenge, as Stanley would say.

And if a few of the birds happen to hack a few carved Shape eyes on various wooden objects into useless lines, well, that’s just coincidence.

Revenge sure is sweet, the Mystery Shack reflects, settling down in the heat of dying summer.

And if the woodpeckers really are up to something, well, it’ll work out, the shack is sure.

 

(The woodpeckers of Gravity Falls have their own agenda. A war, that’s been going on for many, many generations. There is some advantage to be had, living near the Mystery. Having the Mystery peek through your eyes every once in awhile is fair trade, especially when you have the extra energy to tap into in return. At least, that’s what the woodpeckers figure. They have to fight for extra ground whenever they can, against their terrible enemy: the beavers.

For the moment, this summer at least, there’s ceasefire. But, as every bird knows, that turbulent peace cannot last long. The Great Woodpecker-Beaver Clash of the 60s is proof enough of that.

 

Enough of that. Only the current target mattered at the moment: the hatted human.

“Damn birds! Always pecking my window!”

Mission: success.

“I will end you, you hear me? End you! Now, what am I going to tell insurance...a giant woodpecker attack, maybe?”

The nearest woodpecker squawks and takes off into the sky, just in time to see some newcomers coming up the path. Newcomers in black and white. The bird thinks nothing of it but there are others that pay more heed to such occurrences.)

 

More suits? The shack isn’t surprised, not quite, but is instead frustrated. More law people, so soon after getting a new name from Stanley. Wooden floors creak louder than a car backfiring under enemy feet.

Stanley hears, of course, clever human he is. He holds out his arms in his welcoming fashion, baring all of his teeth in his wide mouth. More fool the law people, that they actually seem to believe the teeth-baring, with the way their heart-rates slow.

There’s talking, of course, exchanging of words that the shack has been able to understand from its earliest days. Words don’t matter, not when the newcomers shift back and forth. Ready to strike for some slight, whatever crime Stanley (or rather, Stan _ford_ ) has committed.

The shack has better things to pay attention to than words. Instead, all eyes watch Stanley, every movement, every convincing gesture. Everything, that somehow, when combined, convinced the agents that this man is, and was always, innocent. How...useful.

Lifting the floor just slightly causes a few to trip. Holding the door shut just a little bit after they turn the doorknob has them making strange grunts trying to shove their way through.

But once those men are gone, the Mystery Shack considers every action that Stanley just took to convince them to leave, all without using a single bit of fear-filled aura or violence.

A better way, a quieter way, that would leave Stanley happy _and_ safe.

 

The agents return, late in the darkness, Stanley banging away at the Something Underground. They return just in time to become the test subjects of the Mystery Shack’s newest approach towards intruders.

Nothing to see here, folks, nothing more than stitched up dead animals and weird-shaped rocks. Nothing to see that you would care about. The rooms are creepy and dark, but welcoming, full of the normal abnormal. Exactly what you would expect to be seeing in a tourist trap. The agents leave, none the wiser to the secrets behind the vending machine. A gust of cool air blows through the entire house, hard enough to rattle glass.

Close one, but perfectly handled, with Stanley completely unaware of the danger he had been in. The Mystery Shack swells up at the realization that it had done what Stanley always did, just as good as he always did. The shack is sure, if the man ever knew, he would be proud. But the shack is not like its maker, reliant on praise to get work done. The shack does what it has always done, unnoticed and unthanked: protecting the Pines family of one. (And an absent second. But that’s what Stanley’s working, isn’t he? It’ll work out.

It has to.)

* * *

 

There are wax men. Why are there wax men? Even better question, why did _Stanley_ bring in wax men? Moving wax men at that, causing trouble.

If Stanley isn’t careful, the wax men will get into the Something Underground. And the shack isn’t sure what’ll happen then, but it’ll be bad.

So the shack carefully locks the door and thinks, quite loudly, _nothing here, nothing here, move on._ The thoughts work well enough, even on Stanley instead of agents. There’s a twinge of _something_ in the shack’s wooden walls, but the shack soothes it away with thoughts of protecting Stanley, even from himself.

As for the wax men, they curse and yell whenever the moon has waxed enough. “Curse you, Mystery Shack!” one yells, shaking a lumpy fist.

Mystery Shack, almost like a human’s first and last name. Like Stanley Pines. Hm.

Mystery will do, the shack, no Mystery, decides. Mystery is a good name.

* * *

Twenty-two. That’s how many repairman Mystery’s been through the last decade, and the shack’s rather proud of it.

It takes a rare type of soul to withstand the aura the shack exudes, a sort of feeling that makes most who are exposed to it uneasy at the best and downright panic-stricken at the worse. Short-term is fine, otherwise Stanley would have no customers. Long-term....that’s a different story entirely.

To be fair, the shack is positive a huge part of the malevolent feelings come from the Something Underground and what strange secrets lie on the other side. Mostly. Doesn’t help that most of the people Stanley hires are ‘deadbeats,’ no one near dedicated enough to deal with the strangeness of Gravity Falls over an extended period ot time.

Twenty-two souls, come and gone. And that’s not counting the countless visitors that come through spending their money. Everyone always leaves, in the end, tourists and workers alike. Only Stanley remains.

That’s fine, the shack was only ever built for one person, after all. Just fine.

 

Until the boy. The boy’s never been to the Mystery Shack before or the shack would have recognized him, when Stanley dumped a cloth-thing over his head and said the boy was hired. The boy feels familiar, though Mystery’s never felt him before. Warm, like the sunlight on a nice spring day, free of any gnomes.

The shack hums and instead of freezing like a scared rabbit, or even going as far to run, the boy hums along. Mystery isn’t exactly sure what ‘cute’ is, but is pretty sure whatever it is, the boy is a prime example of  this ‘cuteness’.

Whenever he needs to go, the shack carefully makes the bathroom hide just behind the next door. No need to have organic waste all over the floor, after all. When there’s a young stomach rumbling, well, Mystery supposes that there’s food in the kitchen just around the corner, cupboard conveniently swinging open.  

Nope, nope, nothing special, nothing at all. It’s everything that Mystery does for Stanley, really. Doing it for the child is okay, since he _is_ the shack’s new repairman.

 

(Soos has never been to the old house up the hill before. But now he’s there all the time, thanks to Mr. Pines.

Mr. Pines is so cool, always letting him have a water when it gets too hot outside. _Just water, kid, no soda. I’m not made of money, you know!_ Mr. Pines is the best and the house is up there too. It’s a cool old house, full of secret doors and stairs that go _everywhere!_ Even better, sometimes he can hear the house _singing._ Which Soos thought houses couldn’t do, but it makes sense that a house that belongs to a cool guy like Mr. Pines would do cool stuff no other house could.

Sometimes, when the house sings, Soos sings along. There are no real words, but that’s okay, he can try making groaning sounds too, or make up his own. He’s brought music before, in his old tape player and sung along with his favorite songs. And the house’ll sing back!

 _Super awesome_ , he thinks, running a hand down the wall. The wood shivers under his fingers, all warm and gushy. Just like Abuelita whenever he gives her a hug.

“You’re _awesome_ ,” he whispers into the wall, before hurrying off to try to repair something else.

He doesn't notice the house getting even warmer at the compliment, nor does he notice how the door pretty much jumps aside for him.

Soos has always been good at going with the flow. It's how you thrive, in a place like Gravity Falls.)

 

Mystery doesn’t like repairmen very much, but for the boy, it thinks it’ll make an exception. Another family member, to help Stanley. To keep Stanley company when the nights grow too desperate. The Something Underground is close to completion, anyway. And with every year he draws closer to finally finishing the Something Underground, the boy growing into a man. A young man to keep Stanley company, this Soos. Soos is perfect for him and to repair the shack. No one else could ever come close. Soos and Stanley and Stanford, it will all work out in the end.

The Something Underground sings louder than ever. This summer, this year, it will done. This year, thirty years will come together and Stanford will return.

 _Perfect,_ the shack thinks, settling down for one last nap. It’s sure it’ll need it, to face whatever comes this summer with the Something Underground, whether it’s the Shape or Stanford or both.

This summer, everything will change.

And Mystery is going to be ready for it.


	3. The Summer of Twins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The shack continues wishing for physical limbs, if only to keep up with those crazy kids. Not the Journal's helping at all with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know when you're writing and suddenly your hands slips, adding a couple extra chapters? Yeah, I'm going to guess I'll probably wrap this up in six chapters. Probably. Enjoy!

Well, this is _new. Twins_ , more twins. _Pines_ twins, at that.

Though all Mystery wants to do is flap its windows open and close in excitement, throw out every door wider than ever, it forces itself to wait. The twins will be frightened, like Stanley was at first.

The last thing Mystery wants is to scare away family members.

 

Steps must be taken slowly, like with the tall lumberjack girl. Even though Mystery _hates_ waiting, having waited long enough. Thirty years of waiting, thirty years of the Something Underground rumbling in its strange slumber, dreaming of the world’s end.

But it will all be worth it in the end, Stanley’s years of toil and labor, Mystery is sure. It has to be.

 

(There is something _off_ about the Mystery Shack. And it’s more than a vague feeling this time. Well, Dipper _still_ has a vague feeling, but he has more concrete proof than that! ...Sorta. Every time he opens a door, there’s a different room behind it. Sometimes the hallway is longer than it should be. Other times, it’s just two steps to a bathroom next door. Grunkle Stan _always_ locks the door when he closes up shop for the day, yet somehow the doorknob always easily turns when Dipper and Mabel return after a long day of adventures, no matter how late. Dipper’s _checked._ There’s nothing in the journal about the Mystery Shack being like this, but Dipper’s sure this means whatever happened to the shack to make it like this, happened after the Author’s mysterious disappearance. And obviously there’s only one answer to all of this: the shack is _haunted._

 _A real haunted house_! How cool. How...frightening.

Especially late at night, when there is nothing else to think of, just him and the darkness. Alone in his bed.

Dipper shivers as he sits up, holding the Journal close against his body, almost as a shield. Heart beating fast, he attempts to breathe in and out slowly. But his breaths just speed up, until they’re nearly matching his racing heart.

“Dipper?” The bundled up lump across the room yawns, stretching out two arms from its rumpled mass.

“It’s nothing. Go back to sleep.”

The lump wiggles, until a young girl’s head pops out. “Doesn’t sound like nothing, Dip-dop.”

“It’s just...” Dipper hesitates, lowering his voice for his next words, “...I think this house is haunted.”

Mabel’s eyes widen. “Really?” Dipper finds himself thankful that there’s no doubt in her voice, that she has complete trust in him.

Dipper nods firmly. “Really.”

Mabel’s eyes narrow and she picks up her grappling hook. “Don’t worry, Dipper. If any ghost tries to get us, I’ll hit with my grappling hook!”

“Ghosts are incorpr-”

“Incorp-whatever!” Mabel waves a hand dismissively. “If that doesn’t work, I’ll use glitter and the power of Mabel.”

Dipper finds a small smile creeping onto his face. “You will?”

Mabel grins, braces flashing in the low-light of the moon. “Of course! You’re my brother, no scary ghost is going to get either of us.”

With that, the girl dives back into her cocoon. Her usual snoring starts up soon after. Dipper lays back down, still smiling. “Thanks, Mabel,” he whispers, closing his eyes.

He doesn’t need to be scared when he has his twin on his side.

His dreams are pleasant.)

 

The twins are a whole new source of frustration, the Mystery Shack soon discovers. They just _keep digging things up._ Dipper especially, with his never-ending curiosity. And desire to impress the lumberjack Wendy.

The shack’s little trick of ‘don’t look there’ doesn’t work if the target _actively_ looks for their goal with steel determination. ‘Don’t look’ doesn’t work if the target doesn’t _want_ to forget. It’s not enough to simply blend in when there’s kids just as determined as the Pine twins at work here. The stress is enough to cause the grass surrounding Mystery to wilt. Slightly.

Glass panes rattle as the shack metaphorically exhales. Alright, two children determined to get themselves into trouble? Mystery can _try_ to protect them, though the difficulties multiply when it has no arms nor legs. At the very least, the shack can ward off any less physical threats hungry for souls and dreams. Can hide a trail so the monsters the twins will inevitably anger (taking after Stanford, those two, looking at his actions so many years ago, which the shack remembers fondly) cannot find them here when night falls.

Why wasn’t _Stanley_ doing anything? Surely he would realize what was going on...but he doesn’t. The cry of the Something Underground is too strong, too loud, drowning out the peril his grandniece and grandnephew find themselves in nearly everyday.

 

The danger is real. All of the various artifacts, sitting around to collect dust for almost three decades, are as risky as when they first entered the shack.

The Journal is absolutely _no help_ whatsoever. Oh yes, Mystery knows about the Journal that Dipper carries under his second skins. Those books carry Stanford’s legacy, every last bit of it. Each one oozes of the spirit of the man who had carefully bound them, written in them, and in the end, buried them.

Sometimes, during the daytime hours when Stanley is busy minding his customers, the Mystery Shack uses what little influence it has in the physical world to push over Journal One. Just to feel the slightest touch of who the two of them have lost, who Stanley is fighting for. Just to refresh faded memories of twelve ink-spattered fingers and excited ideas shouted late in the night. Journal One feels hopeful, an adventure in making, written by a wide-eyed innocent.

Journal Three...feels different. Each Journal has its own unique impressions, paper brothers with differing life experiences behind them. Journal Three screams and hisses where One laughs joyfully. Three shudders, drawing its pages close in infinite warning: _Trust No One._ One searches for more and more, even into the darkest of pits, binding ready to burst.

A curious man and a man terrified out of his wits.

The shack knew one better than the other, knew fear thanks to one, but the spirit of the first lives on in it.

 

Yes, the Journal is no help, drawing the kids into life-threatening events like flies into honey. Wax statues unleashed, paper clones, and gnomes...that’s almost too much to keep track of, let alone fend off.

The shack had never been sure what to expect, to hear that younger relatives of Stanley were coming in the summer, but one thing’s for certain: the pig is a surprise.

The goat’s been around forever, but a pig’s something new. Mabel even likes it.

Weird.

* * *

 

Some of the greatest threats come not from the supernatural woods, but from the other direction full of houses and streets.

The short Gleeful boy, for example.

His darkness and want-it-now desire reminds Mystery of beings better left forgotten. Something of his aura howls of Journal Two. Really, that isn’t surprising at all, when the shack considers it. Everything about this Summer is centered around those three cursed books.

That, and the Something Underground.

The Gleeful boy wants Mabel, but not the way Stanley wants for Stanford. There is no love here, only a desire to _own._ A desire not dissimilar to how the Shape viewed this world so long ago. Or not very long at all, depending on how one looked at the situation. (The Shape, the Shape, why does it always come back to the Shape?)

The Gleeful boy will not have the shack’s Pines, in any shape or form.

Besides, Stanley dislikes the Gleeful boy. Good enough reason for the shack hate the kid too.

Stanley is clever where the boy is not. The younger twins are clever as well.

For now, Mystery will watch the Pines drive off Gleeful, with his stupid cursed termites and dumb hair. Helping here and there, of course, those termites ain’t gonna eat themselves. A nice woodpecker poo in that too white hair and the shack nearly dies snickering at the kid’s response. A baby’s fit, nothing more, nothing less.

Yeah, the kids can handle this one.

 

It would take a miracle for that kid to manage to take the shack for himself like he raves about.

* * *

 

Summerween remains a favored time of year for Mystery, just like it is for Stanley. Much like the Halloween the festival is modeled after, a certain spookiness fills the air. Nothing is expected to be nice that night, only creepy. But there are more important factors to Summerween than not having to hide. Stanley’s happiness, of course, is always a plus. But sometimes, a house can get so hungry...even with no actual stomach.

All of the shack’s non-existent metaphorical limbs reach out, sucking in the power of the coming night in desperate thirst. Not the same raw power that the strange dimensional thinness the days around Halloween bring, but the concentrated human belief does well enough.

Of course, such a windfall brings others out to feed that usually do not see the light of day.

 

 _Must you terrify them?_ The shingles on the roof rustle under the Summerween Trickster’s step.

“They must learn their lesson, for daring to mock the holiday,” the creature growls.

 _Remember, I need them back, once the night is through._ A window clatters.

“Only if I get five hundred pieces of the candy when the last lantern goes out,” Trickster huffs, before vanishing into the night, presumably to terrify more children.

The shack sighs, a gust of summer night going through the entire building. Some Summerweens were better than others, for talking with the Trickster. But one thing was for certain: once the Trickster felt slighted, he never let it go. (At least, not for the rest of the night.)

Mystery had sat through more than one of his rants to know that much.

Oh well. Mystery has enough to do, keeping an eye on Stanley’s fear-farming. Delicious. Not to mention there are no woodpeckers to keep an eye on the Trickster and the kids.

 

The shack waits, the whole night through, for the Trickster to return. For him to settle, multi-limbed and nearly scattered, on its roof and talk. About being forgotten, about the new candies that have come out this year, about that crazy man’s raccoon that keeps trying to eat his fingers...about everything. And the shack talks back, about the only constant being a world-destroying machine in the basement, about worrying that one day it’ll lose Stanley forever, about the woodpeckers stabbing into the roof...about everything.

They’re not friends, but Mystery thinks they could be. One day.

The shack waits and the Trickster never comes. The kids are back, though.

Soos, sticking to the chairs, puking grayish (like _real_ gray color) candy up all the next day, reveals the Trickster’s final fate. The Mystery Shack hates him, both of them, Soos and the Trickster. The Mystery Shack cares for both of them, man and revenge-driven candy.  

The Trickster’ll return, like spring flowers from the snows, summer green into fall orange. Things like him always do, independent of true death. Mystery doesn’t blame Soos, for ending the Trickster, though Soos might blame himself. The shack misses the Trickster, but is wise enough to know that they are different beings with different patterns and goals, a breath of wind compared to a solid tree. In fact, the Pines are safer if he’s dead, safer without this angry candy beast at their heels. Better off that way.

It doesn’t matter that the Trickster’s gone, before Mystery could ask him advice.

All that matters now is that the Something Underground is completed.  

All that matters.

(And if the shack carefully hides away a piece of sticky no-name brand taffy under Stanley’s bed, just a small reminder, well, that’s no one’s business but its own.)

* * *

 

Dinosaurs stealing pigs. Fear monsters that break doors. Strange boys that don’t know how to function like normal human beings. Body-switching carpets. Fish-people and lost presidents, according to the woodpeckers.

Boy, this summer sure is busy, the shack reflects.

The Journal, of course, lies behind the worst of the dangers and hungers. But Mystery could be okay with that, if it means this thirty years of Stanley stress ends. The end is closer than ever and the feeling almost _burns._ Perhaps Stanley is right, not to tell the rest of the Something Underground. To keep secrets, like Stanford did before the Something Underground ate him right up. By the time the family finds out, Stanford will have returned and the trouble will be gone before there is even time to brew it like a college student’s coffee.

Nothing can stop this now.

Nobody but-

 

Everything shakes. Dirty dishes rattle in the sink, mirrors almost throw themselves off bathroom walls. A sudden jolt of familiar, too familiar energy, breaking a thirty-years built threshold. For the first time in thirty years, the shack fully _awakens._

The _Shape. The Shape is back!_ Entering Stanley’s mind without the slightest care in the world that it’s violating three decades worth of power put into ‘nothing here, nobody special, Mr. Shape, nothing at all.’ Acting like it hadn’t forgotten the shack’s existantance in that time.

But _how?_ Mystery isn’t arrogant, not in a longshot, but it is pretty sure that its defenses should have held, having held this long already.  

The Shape stayed away long enough, what had drawn it back _now_ , so close to the end?

 

A sleepy woodpecker’s eye view a couple minutes later and the shack has its answer.

The Gleeful boy...with Journal Number Two. Of course. A sinking feeling in its planks, enough to almost sink down to the basement, Mystery realizes both it and Stanley have made a dreadful mistake in underestimating that Gleeful child.

Stanley’s mind at this point in time remains too small, too _full_ for Mystery to be able to fit itself inside. The Shape has an advantage there, being able to change and shift its form to slip past Stanley’s most dangerous gates. The shack, on the other hand, may prowl the boundaries of the human mind, but passes no further than that.

Journal 3 does one decent deed this summer: it provides a way for the twins and Soos to follow the Shape, falling into the dreamscape.

To a battleground they cannot hope to comprehend, against an enemy who has had _centuries_ to prepare and learn.

 

The shack jitters and worries. Four empty bodies, or rather, four minds stuffed in one flesh-sack. Defenseless, against the Gleeful child in the physical world. Just as good as in the dream world, against a creature older than even a house can comprehend.

All Mystery can do is wait, impatiently and fearfully.

All Mystery has _ever_ done is wait.

At some point, the shack thinks, it wants some legs, maybe some arms, if dangerous events are going to keep on occurring. A way to act, rather than just be acted upon.

But for now, the Mystery Shack will guard the physical forms of the brave souls that call it home. It’s the least the shack can do, since it cannot protect their _actual_ souls. For though the Shape may be occupied, other threats remain, that might see the empty bodies and attempt to stake a claim to them.

When Stanford had written that formula, that spell, so long ago, had it occurred...? No, of course not, not when the man had a dream demon marked its ownership on every part of him, physical and otherwise. A dream demon that would tear apart and devour any possible interlopers for daring to trespass. Such danger he would have not known, penning such consequential words in his journals. But the shack is wiser now, old enough to know to watch, where Stanford had not.

The shack guards, but again, with no physical limbs, it cannot guard against the most likely threat of all at this point: the Gleeful child. He’ll come, the shack is sure, and remains just as sure that it’ll need the humans inside to be awake at that point.

Oh, please hurry. Please wake up soon.

* * *

 

Not soon enough.

They wake up but too late. What had the shack thought earlier...? That it would take a miracle for the kid to take the shack. Well, that or a demon, it seems. The Gleeful kid laughs, holding up a piece of paper triumphantly. A piece of paper that apparently means that the Mystery Shack is owned by a small, sweaty eight year old. Sometimes, human laws are _strange,_ strange than even normal Gravity Falls weirdness. It’s solid enough that the Pines must flee, leaving the shack far behind them.

The explosion is painful. The wrecking ball digging into the roof is painful. But losing the Pines, losing Soos and Stanley, that’s the worst pain of all.

Worst of all, there is _nothing_ the shack can do to fight this. Well...Mystery considers past years of terrorized tourists and ignorant suits. Maybe there is _one_ way to fight back...

 

(Gideon _absolutely hates_ this place. He’s going to tear it down as soon he’s got the Journal. Maybe burn it, and salt the ground underneath. And that’s a promise.

The floor is constantly creaking. Shadows always flicker just so in the corner of his eye, so when he turns around, there’s nothing to see.

Slam! There goes a cabinet. Right on his hand.

“Owie!” He shakes his hand, blowing at pinched fingers.

“What’s wrong, Gideon?” His father asks, crouching down to his level.

“Kiss it better,” the child physic orders, holding out his hand. His father quickly obeys, before rising to continue looking through the shack.

Gideon glares at the ceiling, at some stuffed bird hanging from it, one of Stanford’s fakes. In the flickering lights of dying lightbulbs, the feathered menace almost appears to be laughing at him. Whoosh goes some wind, rattling the bird enough that more than a few feathers flop off.

“You won’t beat me, Stanford Pines, you hear me?!” He shakes his fist at the bird. “You can’t, since I’ve already won!”

 _Where’s your precious journal then, if you’ve won?_ The house seems to whisper, shadows growing deeper and longer.

“I’ll get that journal and ultimate power, just you wait,” Gideon grumbles, turning back to a bookshelf full of textbooks. He snorts. Physics? Like Stanford had enough brainpower to understand anything so complex. But that didn’t matter none, not when he needed the journal.

He considers searching the vending machine, but...no, there wouldn’t be anything there. Nothing important at least. _Nothing but cheap candy bars_ , hisses some dark corner of his mind.

Gideon is pretty used to listening to the dark corners of his mind. He turns away, to go out digging instead, unaware that he’s just missed the greatest secret of all.

Or that there’s a journal right below his feet.)

 

It’s fun to play games with the Gleefuls, to cause doors to slam suddenly, chilly breezes to rush right in. Again, the Mystery Shack is reminded why it never considered the Gleeful child much of a threat, he’s so... _childish._ Jumping at the darkness Stanley mastered _years_ ago. And easy to direct too, there’s no fear that he’ll find the Something Underground. Even with the Something Underground screaming as loud as it can. A bit of a puppet, that one, and his parents are even worse.

Fun to mess around, but the shack misses its _real_ people. The pig misses them too and won’t even chew the doorframes in its usual fashion. As irritating the habit usually is, Mystery finds itself missing the pig drool everywhere. And growing more angry at how the child treats Mabel’s beloved pet. The shack wants its real people back, its Mabel and Dipper and Soos and Stanley and Wendy.

Even if it’s real people elect to use _gnomes_ in an attempt to take back the shack. _Gnomes,_ why did it have to always be _gnomes_?

They fail, the twins, an expected result for relying on creatures so petty. Mystery knows its people, though, know that they will win this war. There is no doubt that they will.

The really big robot makes that outcome a _smidgen_ more difficult to achieve, though. Nothing the house can do about that, though, and it focuses its efforts on shoo-ing out that raccoon man hanging out on the roof. (Who seems familiar somehow, for some reason. Not the shack knows anything about that.)

 

But the Gleefuls lose in the end and the Pines return. Dirty, muddy, bruised, but they return in mostly one piece. Mystery hums in joy and refrains from switching up the rooms for the rest of the day. They deserve the rest. The fireplaces burn merrily that night, consuming every last piece of Gleeful trash.

That night, Dipper reveals the journal that has caused so much trouble. That night, Stanley continues to lie, digging an ever deeper hole. Once the shack would have agreed with him, but with the Shape on the horizon? Lies will only ever make it worse.

Stanley is stubborn, steel-minded. He won’t listen to his house. Mystery’ll try anyway. It’s the least it owes those kids for driving Gleeful out and fighting the Shape, the truth.

Three journals, reunited at last. Three journals and the Something Underground will open.

The Mystery Shack’s waited long enough.

Let the wait come to end. Let it _all_ come to an end.


	4. Not What It Seems

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is changing. One question remains: What happens to a house if you take away its foundation and show it just how weak it is?

Almost in response to the Something Underground being finished, the threats in the world above escalate. Supernatural and slightly more normal dangers all together. But worst of all,  _ agents.  _ Mystery remembers agents, remembers hiding from them, knows Stanley’s deep fear of them. Not fear of the actual agents, but of what they represent. The fact that these men could take everything from him, could rip apart his chance to get Stanford and his twin would be lost  _ forever.  _ The shack would lose both of its humans forever. So yes, Mystery knows fear when they come knocking on the door. 

The Something Underground calls and everything, it seems, seeks to answer that call. 

 

The forgotten dead rip themselves out of swollen earth, hungry and terrible. The shack does it best to protect its Pines but that best never seems to be enough, nowadays. Some success is found in slowing the creatures down, closing doors and windows in their rotting faces, changing up the halls so they don’t catch up to the children. 

Banging and swinging the doors that lead upstairs, from the basement full of the Something Underground...nearly isn’t enough. But it is, in the end, just enough. 

Stanley hears the call, running to protect the children he has taken into his heart. He physically attacks the undead, drives them back while the house does all it can to funnel the hordes coming for him and the ‘niblings’. 

Difficult, with a turned Soos that knows all of its secrets and weaknesses using his knowledge against it. Dangerous, to trust anyone so, if that trust ends up like this.  _ Trust no one,  _ Journal Three hisses, keeping its hungry darkness hidden in plain sight on thick pages.  _ Shut up,  _ Mystery tells the book, focusing every fragment of dedicated attention on keeping its remaining people alive. Unzombiefied. Uneaten. Unbitten.

Always a failure, never quite fast enough. The shack fights back, turning the TV on, hoping against all odds that it would be distracting enough, just the right amount to save its Pines.. The Pines fight back, hoping their voices are enough based on a tattered old book. 

They win. Sometimes, death, or zombie death, is not as permanent as it appears to be. Soos is saved. Victory is theirs.

...but not really. 

 

Because deep down, Mystery  _ worries.  _ The most worry it has gone through since its completion. The shack understands, in that same deep down place the worry comes from, that in face of these newest terrible death threats, in face of the  _ Shape _ ...it is helpless. Or as good as, being very useless indeed.

And Mystery utterly  _ despises _ that simple truth. 

The agents will return, the shack remains convinced of that, no matter what may have dragged the pair away. If those specific ones don’t end up returning to knock on the door once more, other agents would come knocking while looking for them. 

The shack can’t scare those men away, not when they’re so determined to find the Something Underground. Not when the Something Underground acts like it is determined to be found.

Mystery worries and waits.

Not much else a house can do.

* * *

 

The children almost die. Again, at the bunker Stanford and the other loved so much. And before the house can catch its nonexistent breath, the threat rises once more. And again, there is absolutely nothing the house can do. 

Mystery can’t even muster the energy to go look for this new (and conquered) danger with woodpeckers. A threat that happened at the Gravity Falls mini golf course, apparently. What’s the point in searching, when there is nothing Mystery can do to protect them?

 

The shack’s memory goes back to periods similar to this before, shared between it and Stanley. Some days, darker than others, always marked by the realization that they were up against terrible odds of ever bringing Stanford home. Times when Stanley was so low, he couldn’t even manage to get out of the bed in the morning. Times when the house slumped, roof leaning, until it was sure it would fall over from the weight of the world. Such times had happened less and less with Soos’ arrival, until disappearing entirely with the twins on the way. But that didn’t change what had happened before. 

The past cannot be forgotten, even as they all move forward, closer to the day of the Something Underground. That, is all that can bring Mystery back, the thought that all of this will have been worth it, that Stanford (the first human, the only important one, at the start) can return. 

Mystery shakes itself from its stupor, opening its many eyes, waiting. There is a feel in the air, an electric hum that the unnatural tune into by instinct. The shack has always known, in the end, what would come with the Something Underground’s completion, though it always denied that knowledge.

The Shape is coming, is coming, tip-tip-tapping at the door. The Shape is coming, is coming. The Shape is...wait, what?

The Shape  _ is already here. _

 

No.

No.

Nonononono. 

Frantically, the shack opens every single eye to search out the pattern that should have been so obvious to see. Obvious, if not for its self-pity and misery standing in the way. 

The Gleeful child had broken the house’s flimsy protection by inviting the attention of the Shape upon Stanley’s head. There is no way to keep the being out of the collective dreamscape now. No protective field remains, only small fragments. 

Traces of the Shape linger in the psych of the Pines. Frightening them, hunting them. 

_ Possessing  _ them. 

The Shack manages to divert the Shape’s attention elsewhere, but remains unable to drive it out of Dipper. Even with that tiny victory, Mystery remains unsure if it was a victory at all, if this win was merely allowed by the Shape’s lack of interest in the shack itself. 

 

(There is a note.

Mabel reads it, of course. And when she’s done, tears come spilling out of her like rain. Tugging her sweater over head, she chants to herself,  _ everything’s okay, everything’s okay.  _

But it’s not okay. Not at all. Not even Sweatertown can make it better.

She almost  _ lost her brother forever _ , just for a stupid puppet show. She’s so  _ stupid.  _

Even worse, Mabel didn’t even know that her brother had been replaced, not until the sock puppet floated in. 

What kind of sister is she, that she couldn’t even tell her twin had been possessed by an evil triangle demon? A failure. 

The note sits in front of on the bed, jagged lettering taunting her. 

**Want to join him, Shooting Star?**

Mabel sniffles, rubbing at her face. Her fingers itch to tear the paper to shreds, to erase every bit of Bill’s presence. But she doesn’t. 

Some lies can’t be told. Not that she has ever been very good at lying in first place. Mabel places the note in the journal, scribbling a quick cat doodle underneath it. 

She can’t fix this. Everything is changing and she doesn’t know what to do about. All Mabel  _ wants  _ to do is hide, hide and hope summer never ends. 

Impossible. Mabel wipes off her tears, cuddling into her blankets. She keeps a careful eye on her brother, who for once is asleep before her. Keeping guard. 

“You can watch him for me, right?” Mabel whispers, rubbing a hand over the rough splintery wood making up the wall next to her bed. She’s not sure why she’s talking to the house, just a house, but is it? If she leaves her hand long enough, there’s a rumbling agreement to her words her fingers can feel. Maybe in this impossible place, the Mystery Shack is more than it seems. Mabel hopes, hopes against hope, that her brother will be safe. That Bill can’t come back. 

The girl falls asleep in the end, hand still touching the wall. The nightmares come but none stay for long. Before long, sweet dreams overcome the dark. 

The Mystery Shack watches and waits, chasing away what it can.

But Bill Cipher does not return. This night is safe.)

* * *

 

The cloaked mutterers no longer appear in the woods late at night. No unlucky human has been taken away screaming and crying, only to reappear with barely a thought present in feeble minds for a couple days now. Strange. 

Mystery considers sending out woodpeckers to figure out where the mutterers have disappeared off to, but in the end decides not to. 

Humans come and go. Is it really a surprise that a particular group of them is now gone? The shack’s own humans are safer with the mutterers gone. It  _ had  _ been rather tiring to keep warding the mutterers off, so they couldn’t drag off Stanley or Soos or others to whatever hole the mutterers came from. 

The shack is content, that its humans are safe, and that’s all it has ever needed or wanted.

* * *

 

The Northwest Mansion, out of every building that has risen in Gravity Falls, comes closest to being what the Mystery Shack is, through sheer age. 

Enough Deals made in that house for demonic power to seep into the cracks. The Northwest Mansion is almost alive, fed a centuries-long diet of Gravity Falls’ darker side. 

  
The Mystery Shack absolutely hates it.  _ Despises  _ the mansion and all who live in it. 

A mirror gleaming darkly of what could have been, what should have been, had Stanford stayed just a little bit longer in the Shape’s grip. It is thanks to that mansion that the Shape’s hold is so strong, so solid, when all Mystery wants to do is escape that ever-reaching shadowy hunger. 

 

Mystery doesn’t want Dipper to leave to go  _ there _ , to be exposed to the madness present. 

The boy goes anyway, curious attention-hungry soul he is. Goes to help his sister in the very least. This way, the house hopes, history will not repeat itself once more. 

There is too much to consider to keep a closer eye on the twins. The timer has begun, the Something Underground starting to drill open reality’s gate. A careful eye must be kept on the machine, least Stanley get himself sucked in as well. Or if the Something Underground devours anything else, hungry beast it is. The shack waits, just a little longer.

* * *

 

That careful eye needs too much attention, if the shack has missed this much of what’s going on. The twins, Soos, they have found what has been hidden for so long. 

Mystery, of course, cannot read any of the papers tossed about the room. Buildings don’t read and woodpeckers don’t either. 

Judging the increasingly agitated actions of Dipper and Mabel’s nervousness, however, the papers are very important indeed. Thought-changing, at least for the young humans. 

The Mystery Shack never cared about paper beyond the Journals before. This extreme reaction leads the building to reconsidering that past stance on ‘human paper’. Might need to look into that. Enough on that, however.

* * *

 

They find what was always hidden, the three of them. At the most hazardous moment. The shack does what it can to slow them, difficult as it is when the Journals tell Dipper exactly how to end this once and for all. Stanley arrives, just in time before the Something Underground is shut down. Arrives and is trapped. The decision: close it down or keep it open.

The shack, once again, can do nothing but watch as the most important decision in its existence as a house is made. Close or open? Trust the book or the man?

 

Stanley cries out, the most desperate he has ever been, at least in front of these children The shack knows better, has three decades of memories to pick through.

_ “Everything I’ve ever done, I’ve done for this family!”  _

The Something Underground breaks the world apart using silent screams, much like a farmer tilling the ground for something greater. A force unlike any storm Mystery has ever withstood before builds, an aching buzz. The throbbing stops flashing in and out, to become  _ constant.  _ It’s coming, the Something Underground is opening, it’s  _ on its way.  _

Mystery clenches its timbers in preparation for impact. Various invisible tendrils snake their way around the four souls standing at the epicenter of disaster. Each takes a firm grip on their ignorant chosen target. These actions are all the shack can take, before reality breaks. 

_ There isn’t enough time, there isn’t enough time!  _ A few seconds can be stretched to last centuries in the dreamscape, but in the waking world, a few seconds will only ever be a few measly seconds. 

_ “I trust you. _ ” Those three words, words that make or break unions of all kinds, tear open the fabric of everything, bring the force crashing down. 

And it is all Mystery can do to hold on.

It would take a god at this point to stop the flood. 

 

But Mystery is no god. It is, after all, only a house. Houses fall prey to paltry things like termites and water all the time. Anything bigger would definitely tear the building apart. 

Having gravity itself turn against the shack...well, that’s just a bit much. 

The base has been groaning for days now. This one last push is enough to finish the job. With a scream, the house and its foundation separate. Much like a tree being pulled up by the roots. 

Mystery has never felt such pain before in its existence. It is all it can do to soundlessly wail. Wail and hold onto its people ever so tight, as the Something Underground attempts to devour them and swallow them like it did to Stanford so many years ago. 

The world burns. For the first time in its existence, the shack properly sees  _ color  _ with its nonexistent eyes that are present in reality.  _ Blue _ , almost the same shade the shack knows from dreams, blue  _ everywhere.  _

Awe and agony intertwined, neither overcoming the other until they are both too much to bear. Eventually Mystery gives in ( _ has  _ to give in) and for the first time in thirty-six years, knows nothing of the world surrounding its shattered foundation.

 

(There is a portal and there is a man that comes out of it. Somewhere in that, there is a rift that means the end of the world as it has always been. 

But where does it start, this rift? Oh, the man knows where it will end, with fire and ice and a demon laughing about the man’s failure. 

Did it start with a mournful brother spending thirty years building his way to him? Did it start with a boy finding the words  _ Trust No One  _ and trusting anyway? Did it start with a girl saying, “ _ I trust you,”  _ to a man old in loneliness, old in time? 

Or maybe, just maybe, a rift opens up because a strange parody of a house, some odd spawned mix of a dream demon and a too curious scientist exists. Existing, spending thirty years holding reality together as a reality-destroyer is rebuilt underneath it, pulling it tighter and tighter in the process. Thrashing and ripping at that same carefully tightened reality, when the portal tears the house apart as thanks. 

Maybe it’s the house. Maybe it’s the Pines. Perhaps, the rift is the combined efforts of everyone that was ever involved with the portal in any shape or fashion.

But in the end, it doesn’t really matter whose fault it is.

All that matters is that the rift is real and the clock is tick-tick-tocking.)


	5. Mystery verses the Rift, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The grass is not greener on the other side. In fact, it's brown and dying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long. Been having some difficulty with the upcoming chapters, so they'll be divided up a bit more to make my life easier.

When the Mystery Shack inevitably surfaces in a slug-like return to sentient awareness, it feels...odd. Slowly, the shack feels a tickling along its wood planks, an itch like that of a mouse infestation. New strange things stirring in its frame. Namely, aspects of weirdness that had taken advantage of the Something Underground’s opening to sneak through to a new home from the nightmare side.   
Nothing Mystery will stand for, of course. The weirdest thing about this house will always be the house itself, nothing more. (Except, maybe the people living in it, of course.) A cycloptopus or two near the elevator shaft, a Shape statue that’s elected to start moving around in Stanford’s study, a couple of thought-suckers floating invisibly around the kitchen...nothing the shack can’t take care of, while paying attention to the drama taking place beside the broken Something Underground at the same time. At least the agents are all gone. Mystery doesn’t think it could have handled listening to the twins, minding the weirdness, and chasing off the agents all at the same time.   
There is so much anger and spitted out insults. They hate and love each other all at once, Stanford and Stanley, these stubborn humans. Old memories surface, of exactly what had started this whole ‘fixing the Something Underground’ in the first place.   
A fight, a fight that the Shack had never quite understood before. Too young, too immature. Now that enough time has passed, Mystery comprehend (somewhat) of what happened that fateful night. What rage and pent-up memories of wrongdoing escalated to right underneath its roof.   
Somehow, something had happened long ago between the two of them, long before this house had been built or even conceived of. Something bad, leading the two men to hate each other even to this very day.   
A rift the Shape must have taken advantage of. Why must everything always go back to the Shape? Mystery rumbles, frame shuddering slightly. Stanley and the twins don’t notice the house moving around them, but Stanford does, neck muscles tightening as he forces himself not to react any further. Soos, Mystery is pretty sure, always notices its various fits and starts, with his incredible repairing skills. The rest of him is just oblivious enough not to consciously note it. 

None of that matters, not when the elder twins are arguing. Again.   
Mystery tunes in, just in time to catch the end of it: Stanford telling Stanley to leave. Forever. By the end of the summer. What? The Mystery Shack’s timbers groan, even louder, loud enough that even the children hear it. No, no, no. Not after thirty years, thirty years of one twin pining for the other.   
That can’t be allowed to happen, not again. But then, is Mystery sure that it wants the twins together? They had argued during almost every bit of time spent in each other’s presence, even with it being decades without seeing each other. Would there be peace if one left, for good?  
Window shutters shake and bathroom switches twice, no thrice, with the secret study. No, Mystery can’t think that way. That way is a trap. Stanley spent thirty years on this, spent thirty glorious years with the shack, had even named the shack! No way it would rid itself of Stanley. As for Stanford...well, the man had helped create the house in the first place. Mystery supposed it owed him for that. And the fact that Stanley wanted him, even if he didn’t know quite how to handle his newly-returned brother. Or his brother him. 

Mystery stretches out its tendrils of power, reaching, grasping. There is something wrong, not quite the same about the Something Underground. Stanford takes the Something Underground apart, an act the shack is grateful for, after so many years of that siren call grating its nonexistent ears. The difference is more than that, more than breaking down. Or perhaps that is what the problem is exactly. Breaking down.  
There is a hole. A rip, a tear, in the fabric of reality. It is wrong. Opening where the portal should have closed. Oh no. Even as the Mystery Shack watches, the rift hiccups, widening and deepening. A bigger tear means the end, the end of everything the shack has ever known.   
Mystery attempts to shove the two sides of the rift back together, to fix the hole in reality. But each attempt just makes the hole grow wider, stretching across more and more dimensions until even Stanford can see the rift with his human eyes in common 3D.  
Which works out in the end. Stanford grabs it, fixes it, shoves the rift away to place where it stops growing. Mystery gives a silent sigh of relief. It knew that Stanford could fix it, Stanford gave it life after all. No reason to doubt him. But what about making Stanley leave, forever?   
Mystery...doesn’t know. It knew everything would change once Stanford returned, but no stretch of imagination could have prepared the house for how much everything would change. Kinda   
silly, in hindsight.   
What to do now, that is the question. Thirty years for this, what next? Next, keep the Pines safe. The end goal now and forever. 

Stanford heads for the elevator, presumably to head up stairs. Now, the house might still care about him but no way is it going to forgive him for promising to kick Stanley out.   
Mystery fishes around, searching for something, anything to toss out. It grabs the first thing it gets a hold of and tosses it out.   
Bam! A cycloptopus, dropped right on Stanford’s head inside the elevator. Mystery watches, slightly amused, as the two struggle in the small metal box. At least until Stanford takes out some glove weapons and the cycloptopus turns to escape rather than attack.   
About that time, Mystery decides that maybe the elevator should hurry up. A quick shove there (and if Stanford almost falls over as a result, well, bonus) and the elevator shoots up to the main level in a flash.   
A flash which has Stanford stumbling out after a rogue cycloptopus. Or, er, running out. Whoa, he gets back up on his feet pretty fast, doesn’t he? Mystery pokes at the cycloptopus a bit, carefully corralling it away from any exits such as the windows and doors. No need to allow it to become a risk later on.   
The creature doesn’t last much longer anyway, thanks to Stanford frying it into a crisp. Safe once more. Well, as safe as it gets in Gravity Falls. 

Dipper tries, once again, to get Stanford’s attention. He, once again, fails. Well, until the child falls into the basement, bringing a game that the Mystery Shack has never heard of, but apparently Stanford loves. A game that brings a new strange foe, that the Shack has no chance of challenging. A wizard that steals both Dipper and Stanford, leaving it up to Mabel and Stanley to rescue the two from being eaten. Leaving the shack behind to once more stew in its thoughts about its newly gained information.   
A fact about its creator the shack never knew, this game. The Mystery Shack feels a shiver run through its planks at the thought, disquieted. What else does the shack not know about Stanford? What other enemies await other than the Shape that Mystery can’t fight, simply because it doesn’t know enough about Stanford. 

With a hum, the thermostat kicks on, driving the temperature inside the house even higher. Lucky that none of residents are currently inside to experience the unneeded heat. Mystery doesn’t want them, least of all Stanford, around for this anyway. Counters, upstairs and down, shake. Shake hard enough to toss whatever articles that sit on them all over the place. Books fall over, crappy doors almost break right off their hinges. Briefly, Mystery considers causing a big enough quake to knock over what’s left of the Something Underground before discarding the idea as too much of a risk. Some part of the shack still wants to tear the Something Underground apart anyway, consequences be damned.  
Because, right now? The Mystery Shack is angry. Done with this entire debacle.   
Enough to rage for as long as it is able, as long as its people remain absent.  
Strange to be angry for so long. Mystery can’t remember the last time it was so incredibly angry. It’s tiring, to be that angry, tiring enough that all power has gone out of slamming doors and windows by the time the two sets of twins (and their friends) return to finish off ‘Duck-tective’. They’re displeased with the show, somehow, but Mystery can only find happiness in their safety, anger long cooled. 

Mystery’s anger may be over quickly, but the elder twins’ rage is long-lasting. A short fuse verses a long burning one that will end in an explosion. The Mystery Shack can just sense how much the twins long for each even as they despise each other with the same breath. Things would be much easier if humans could sense emotions the way the Mystery Shack could.   
The mess only gets worse as time goes on. Instead of working together, Stanford and Stanley ignore each other in their stewing rage.   
Stanford even allows Dipper to make the worse of violations, to mind-control his own brother! Sometimes, Mystery has to wonder. Has the Shape changed Stanford for the worst, out there in worlds beyond Mystery’s view or reach? Possible. Very possible.  
Very likely, in fact. Mystery doesn’t know its human anymore.   
It wants to do the thing that humans call crying, but there are no tear ducts for water to come from. No lungs to make the sobbing sound. 

The Shape keeps coming, keeps intruding in Stanford’s dream. The Mystery Shack can’t stop it, no matter how hard it tries. Every attempt brings stinging fire, a casual backhand. The Shape doesn’t even notice that there is a blockage in the first place.  
It...hurts. Burns, even.   
Mystery fights and fights, but supernatural wood is nothing against just as mystical blue fire. Despite all the years spent practicing with Stanley, the Mystery Shack’s innate defenses are not enough. It needs a boost, a kick up in power of some kind.   
Something like...unicorns. Yes, unicorns. Mystery recalls little of unicorns, other than they are Powerful and they HURT Stanford once. They may have hurt him, but surely they will hurt the Shape more?   
Where to stand...Mystery doesn’t know. Not that it can really stand in the first place. But it has to save Stanford, no matter the cost.   
Unicorns, an imaginary wind howls in the world of dreams. Unicorns, the pipes shake out. Unicorns, squeals the wood stairs underfoot.   
“Unicorn hair,” is what Stanford says. “We need unicorn hair.”   
The house shudders and wiggles with a sigh. Again, Stanford glances about nervously, hand going to her belt. To his weapon.   
Mystery...Mystery should stop doing that. How is it supposed to convince Stanford of anything if he doesn’t trust it? But the unicorn thing worked even without the trust.   
Maybe it’s possible that everything will work out.   
(Just maybe Stanford will let Stanley stay...)


End file.
